1. Field
This application relates generally to data storage, and more specifically to a system, article of manufacture and method of dedupe file-system garbage collection.
2. Related Art
In case of a dedupe file system, garbage data chunks should be periodically removed to recycle the storage space. A garbage collector functionality (GC) can be implemented to clean out detected garbage data chunks. For example, a GC can use a reference counting mechanism. One drawback of reference counting is that it increases the new file creation time because reference count for each of the chunk included in the file needs to be incremented. This further needs serialization between multiple writers processing the same chunk. This serialization needs overhead of locking mechanism for reference counting. As a result, the overall backup window can be increased. Accordingly, alternatives to the reference-counting mechanism can be implemented to minimize the impact on the backup window.